Show of the week: Hindsight

Having been years in the making, drama series Hindsight is now on US cable and about to be launched internationally. It was originally set for broadcast net NBC, before being picked up, refreshed and launched by VH1 in January of this year as part of the Viacom net’s push into scripted programming.

The show follows Becca (Laura Ramsey), a divorcee, on the eve of her second wedding. After a bout of reminiscing she finds herself transported back to twenty years to the first day of her married life. A female friendship dynamic is set up as she reunites with her long-lost best friend Lolly (Sarah Goldberg), and has to work through the predicaments she faced the first time around, and ask whether she would do it all differently.

One change in the cable version is the span of time Becca travels back is greater, from 2015 to 1995. The show’s creator, Emily Fox (Jane By Design), says the move from broadcast to cable allowed the writing team to ‘spread their wings’.

“It was definitely designed as serialised piece and that’s one of the luxuries of cable, it doesn’t have to be procedural or standalone,” she says. “What sets cable apart from broadcast is you really have the chance to examine the characters and to let the story breathe.”

The trip back to the mid-90s New York provides a chance for people to relive the music, fashions and culture of the day. “But it isn’t a nostalgia piece,” Fox says. “It’s about the journey of the main character and her personal life, the nostalgia grows up around that – the fact she can’t work a pager and the 1990s music and wardrobe were a happy surprise.”

The roster of exec producers on the A ten-part one-hour drama includes John A. Norris (One Tree Hill), Carl Beverly and Sarah Timberman (Masters Of Sex). The series opener was directed by Michael Trim (Orange Is the New Black).

Fox says there is plenty of opportunity for humour with the premise. “The pilot was developed as a drama with comedy elements, but with the full series I realised how much comedy I could write,” she says. It is fluid: some episodes are drama with comedic moments and others more comedy with dramatic elements.”

Entertainment One will launch the series internationally in Cannes, with Fox in attendance. She says it has universal appeal and eOne will be hoping that translates into international sales at the market.

The show: Hindsight
The distributor: Entertainment One (eOne)
The broadcaster: VH1 (US)
The concept: Drama about a divorcee who travels back twenty years to the day after her wedding